It is possible to evaluate Dogville on at least two separate levels. On one hand you can judge how well it works as a drama, a piece of entertainment, and on the other you can evaluate its merit as an allegorical message piece about a poisoned society (which may or may not stand in for all of America). As the former, it is awkward and stilted, and with a running time of 177 minutes, almost unbearably long. As the latter, it is interesting to talk about with friends willing to share in a spirited debate, but many of the legitimate points Lars Von Trier are buried beneath pretentiousness.

Give Von Trier his due: this movie doesn’t look, sound, or think like anything else you’ll see in 2004. Filmed on a large soundstage, with limited props and no sets, the citizens of the fictional Depression-era town of Dogville mix and mingle in a world free of buildings. Their homes are designated by chalk outlines on the floor, and the entrances into and out of doorways are indicated by sounds and by actors miming the opening of a door. It’s a jarring, and in some ways fascinating way to shoot the film, and the opening shot, a God’s eye view of the oblivious townsfolk is undeniably interesting and thought-provoking. The problem with this technique is in a three hour movie, Von Trier exhausts the visual possibilities of such a setup well before his plot has played out, and looking at a mostly empty soundstage for 177 minutes can get a bit tiresome.

The people of Dogville are portrayed by a true all-star cast including Lauren Bacall, Paul Bettany, Ben Gazzara, Philip Baker Hall, and Patricia Clarkson. Their simple existence is complicated by the arrival of a stranger in town named Grace (Nicole Kidman), who is pursued by gangsters with unknown motives. Bettany’s Tom Edison (no relation to the inventor) finds Grace and offers her asylum in the little town if she will work for everyone as a way of paying of the debt she is accruing by putting their life in danger. Though Grace is initially accepted by Dogville, they slowly begin to distrust her, or lust after her, and she is exploited by the town, physically and sexually. By the end of the film, the men of Dogville rape her regularly and keep her in check by chaining her to a weighty iron wheel that she must lug behind her.

If it sounds far-fetched, it most certainly is. It’s difficult to watch Grace’s torture (“The Passion of the Grace” perhaps?) and even more difficult to sit through her passive acceptance of it, the noncommittal reaction to brutal inhuman treatment. And before the film arrives at this absurd twist of plot, it is not particularly compelling. Narrated by the intentionally sardonic voice of John Hurt, the episodic narrative unfolds languidly, performed by actors who seem, due to a decision by themselves or their director, to speak in monotone mumbles. Perhaps, as some insist, this is all part of Von Trier’s technique to distance ourselves from the conventions of the work - the weirdo sets can be seen to serve the same purpose - so we focus on the various readings of the text: as a bizarro Christian allegory, or an indictment of small-town America or of the chew-’em-up-spit-’em-out attitude of capitalism. If Von Trier didn’t seem so far out in left field with the communal brutality and the ultra-bleak worldview, maybe these elements would work better for me.